May 23, 2011

That's right, tomorrow's the day. Think Tanked will re-load at The Washington Post tomorrow morning. I'm not 100% of the time, but you know I won't be able to keep the news quiet and I'll let you know as soon as possible.

If you don't know what all is happening, you can get all caught up here.

May 16, 2011

Ok, so here's the big news: The Washington Post made an offer I couldn't refuse and Think Tanked and I will now be there. There are many details forthcoming, but for now, here's the staff announcement made by the Post today:

We are pleased to announce that Allen McDuffee will be bringing his Think Tanked blog to the Post, where he will write about Washington’s robust ideas industry.

Allen has been an independent journalist for the past several years, writing for The Nation, New York Observer, Huffington Post and Raw Story. He has been awarded funding from The Nation's Investigative Journalism Fund and is a two-time fellow at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. Before his journalism career, Allen worked more than seven years for Washington political consulting firms and think tanks.

He launched Think Tanked on his own a year ago, creating a beat from the world of think tanks. At the Post, he will write about the increasing and changing role these institutions play in Washington's ecosystem.

Allen will be based on the National staff and will report to Barbara Vobejda. His blog will launch in the near future.

Kevin Marilyn Emilio

Needless to say, I'm absolutely thrilled and can't wait to get started! I'll post a little later with more details, but for now, there's a bunch of work to do. Thanks for all the reader patience and support while this has been worked out over the last couple of months.

A few readers have written in recently asking why posting on Think Tanked has been so sporadic over the last several weeks.

No, the blog isn't shutting down or anything like that. It's actually quite the opposite. I can't share too many details right now (since none are confirmed, as of yet), but I've been negotiating with a handful of organizations to take Think Tanked in a new direction--to make it bigger, better and with a wider readership. The discussions with so many parties involved have taken a considerable amount of time and I'm afraid Think Tanked has suffered because of it.

But! I'm very excited about all of this and I can't wait to share it with you; it's just not quite there yet. I expect to make a major announcement by the end of the month. Thank you all for the support and your continued readership--I promise the wait will be worth it.

The Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation have each announced that Karen Elliott House, former senior vice president of Dow Jones & Company and publisher of all print editions of The Wall Street Journal, has joined boards at the think tanks. At CNAS, Elliott has become a member of the Board of Directors and at RAND she has been elected to a second term on the Board of Trustees.

“Karen possesses extraordinary expertise and decades of foreign policy experience garnered from her own reporting and from leading some of the best news outlets in the business,” said CNAS Chief Executive Officer Nathaniel Fick in a released statement. “Her insight and guidance will be invaluable to the Center and we are honored to have her join our Board.”

"We are delighted that Karen House is returning to the RAND board. As a journalist and publisher, she is dedicated to RAND's mission and its core values of quality and objectivity," said RAND CEO James A. Thomson said.